Chapter 6: THE LORE #1

After the meeting with the city lord, Najma had to wait a bit for the promised clothes to be delivered to her by the lord's assigned guard.

Karen was it? Najma pondered.

No longer than five minutes later, the female guard came back and gave her the clothes, she even went out of her way to provide Najma with a change room by casting a spell that conjured mist of darkness that enveloped her.

Najma silently received the female guard's hospitality and changed into the clothes she was given. Dark grey pants and bright blue sleeveless blouse, they were so simple yet the clothes were able to synergize with her natural beauty, they showed how smooth and fair her skin was and quite outlined her body.

Been awhile since I wear something fancy, Najma thought to herself.

She stepped out of the dark mist and handed out the red cloak that Gerald, the commander of city army, had given her. The female guard received the red cloak and deactivating her spell, dispersing the dark mist back into nothingness. "I will be waiting for you at the south gate." Karen said and immediately departed.

Najma didn't give the female guard a second look, and proceeded to go to the place where she had been throwing half her salary for the last six months.

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Najma navigated herself through the narrow and complex alleys. The road that she walked was flanked by rundown houses which roofs and walls were half broken. Curious eyes peeking from within the buildings as she passed their hovels. After few minutes, she arrived at suspiciously fine building. It wasn't grand or anything, it was just more clean and more intact, but if one took into account of the surrounding broken buildings, this one might as well be the equivalent of a castle.

Najma stepped forward and lifted up her hand, intending to knock the door. But just when her hand about to meet the wooden frame, the door opened on its own. Unfazed, Najma proceeded and entered the house, and as her entire being was in, the door moved again and closed.

"You dress pretty, what's the occasion?" A man who stood at the corner of the room greeted her.

Najma turned her head and looked at him, "Nothing. I just stumbled into a problem and had to borrow this clothes for the time being."

"Stumbled, eh? Well whatever. Do you come here to sow your hard-earned gold onto our soil as usual?" The man held out his hand, expecting to be given something.

"No." Najma answered, "I am here to reap them."

The man was perplexed for a second, "I am still don't have the whole pieces to complete the puzzle." He reasoned.

"Doesn't matter. Tell me everything you know. I can wait no longer. My time in this city is numbered. I believe you will not see me again after tomorrow." Najma insisted.

#######

The two of them went to the cellar below. In there, laid a wooden table with messy stacks of paper. The man lit additional candle to brighten the room. He then gestured Najma to take a look at the stacks of paper on the table.

"I don't have time to read all of these. Give me the summary." Najma demanded.

The man took two wooden mugs and a bottle from nearby shelf, then put them on the table. He poured the bottle of ale into the mugs and pushed one of them closer to Najma, "Sure." He answered and downed the liquor.

"A little bit of forewords though, I did everything I can. I used every connection I have and hired few professionals that every coin you gave me could buy. So I don't want you to say my effort was inadequate, then proceed to rip me apart. Just like I said earlier, I still don't have the whole pieces to complete the puzzle." The man reasoned.

"I'll be a judge of that." Najma promised him nothing, she wouldn't let herself be tricked by a little reasoning, she had given the man four gold coins a month at minimum, and she would be damned if her investment was slandered by him.

The man looked at Najma and sighed, "Just don't kill me okay? You gave me quite a task, don't expect a lowly bandit like me to carry it out perfectly. Besides, who the hell would launch an investigation on themselves?" The man whined. He rummaged the stacks of paper in front of her and proceeded to give her the outline of his investigation.

"Alright I'll begin from the start. Right after you beat me black and blue and taught me a lesson to never rob an unassuming woman, especially you, again, I spent the first months carrying out your demand by asking folks around the town. Please don't look me like that, at the time I thought your demand was kind of silly, so I don't put much effort into it. Nonetheless to say, I found nothing on you, and from there I thought you were merely a foreigner, someone from another town or another kingdom altogether, so I put more effort into it. I used few of the gold you gave me that month to hire a professional, we spent two month sweeping up the six kingdoms to investigate you, and how surprised we were when we found nothing on you, again."

The man peeked at her from behind the papers he hold, finding no reaction on her, he looked away from her and put his sight on the paper again.

"After that, my curiosity was more than raised. After all, someone must hailed from somewhere, and that somewhere would have some people who know you, but you have nothing at all? That's just ridiculous, there is a foul play, at least the professional I hired agreed as much. So I tripled the effort, I used every connection I have, I called every favor I possessed, I spent three-fourth of your money to hire every expert on information gathering your money could buy. Forwards to four months later, namely two days ago, we finally found something on you."

The man put the papers back to the table, he crossed his arms and looked seriously at her.

"We found out that you hailed from the slums in Trivert, a city at Mafals Queendom. We also found that your name was not Najma, you were Cataline... We also found the reason why tracking your origin was so hard." Ben said the last part after a short silence.

"... and that is?" Najma inquired.

At her question, The man eyed her for a moment. He looked at her cautiously, all friendly manner were gone, "You sure you don't know?" He said with quite deliberation.

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Najma felt the man was tensed, "Ben, If I know anything about myself, I wouldn't employ your service." she reasoned.

Ben mulled over her reply for a moment, "Alright." He said. Ben took a deep breath and sighed, "The reason tracking your origin was so hard... is because most people that know you were killed. Few survived, of course, otherwise we would find nothing again. But they kept their mouth tightly shut. It was a mere luck that one of them has a kind heart and warned us to stop sniffing around."

Najma took a moment to process his words, "Killed? Everyone that knew me were killed? By whom?"

Ben eyed her and visibly struggled with his inner thought, "Sure you don't know anything?" He repeated.

Najma rolled her eyes, "Do I look like someone who would throw away four gold coins a month to a bandit so I can play him around? I stake my life to get those coins, literally."

"No... no you don't." Ben answered.

"Then tell me who hunted down the people who knew me. If they went to such a length to erase them, they will double the effort to erase me. So tell me, right now." Najma pressed.

"Alright." Ben said and prepared himself, as if he was about to shitted out a large crap from his mouth. "Najma... you are possibly have some kind of connection to The League of Lament."

#######

"The League of what?" Najma asked, confused.

"You don't know?" Ben asked back.

Najma swiftly grabbed the wooden mugs filled with ale on the table and threw it at Ben, the man could barely dodge in time.

"I swear if you ask that question again I will beat you up, Ben. It irks me that you constantly treat me like I hide something, I don't! I am not playing around, Ben. I am in dire need of information, about this world, and about myself. So go ahead and say 'you don't know?' again, I dare you Ben I double dare you!" Najma yelled and ranted. Anger and frustration oozing out of her.

Ben stuck out the upper half of his face, peeking. The rest of his body was still taking cover behind the table, "Alright." He answered Najma's anger short.

After a moment of silence, he decided to get out of his cover and stand up, "Never know you for short-fused". He commented, to which Najma immediately threw an angry look. Ben held both his hands up, and quickly opened his mouth.

"League of Lament is... How should I put this. They are not a criminal syndicate like the famous Bloodseeker, because they don't care about wealth nor power. They are not a cult either, like those heretics from The Grim Pilgrims, because they never preach about any god. The League of Lament is... a group for the agents of sorrow. Wherever they appear, misery would follow. Yes, that's what they are."

" Only when one know grief would they recognize happiness, that is the well-known phrase that was always spoken by their agents, moments after they sowed their chaos around. They attacked royalty and peasant alike, they went after whoever they deemed had forgotten about sorrow and misery. Because of that, they are hunted by nobles and thieves alike. Nobody wants them alive."

"The person who came to us and claimed to know you said that you have something to do with The League. They hunted you and those who knew you down, either because you had crossed them, or you had become their newest member. Because really, that are the only possibilities. The man's hand trembled terribly when he retold us the event of the massacre, you know."

Ben threw a glance at Najma and found the woman tiredly messaging the bridge of her nose.

"You okay?" He asked.

"No." Najma replied.

Then there was a moment of silence. Ben wasn't sure how he should approach this problem. At one hand, he didn't want to get involved with any major power, either the good ones or the evil ones. On the other hand, he was already a waist-deep into this shit, and if he chickened out now, he might as well tidying up the little wealth that he had and writing letter containing his last will. The only reason he kept diving into this rabbit hole was because he had hoped to find an escape route when he finally mapped out this entire turd.

As Ben mulled over his options, he heard a sobbing. He glanced at Najma and found the woman crying. Ben didn't offer her any word of comfort, because he sure would cry too if the two of them swapped shoes.

"Everyone wants me dead." Najma faintly said, tears still streaming down from her eyes. "First, it was because those Fabled [Class] gibberish. Then, it was because some group of terrorist..." Najma laughed, her life was one hell of a joke.

"Wait a second." Ben cut in, "What do you mean by Fabled [Class]?"

#######

Najma couldn't hold herself. She didn't care anymore about anything, so she told Ben everything. About how her fellow adventurers hated her so much that they were willing to try to kill her on broad daylight. About how the guild master took their side. About how the city lord wanted to get rid of her and pressured her to play along with his charade. About the imminent danger of being hunted by all kings because of her exotic [Class]. And finally, about the evil group Ben had just told her.

"Damn..." Ben tried to take all her stories in. He now knew things that she had been through, he wondered how the hell the woman in front of him didn't break until this point.

Ben took a deep breath and sighed. After hearing Najma's story, this entire fiasco almost made sense. There was only one critical hole in this fuckery,

"Najma... If you don't mind me asking, How exactly you don't aware of most of the things? I mean, you don't know that your [Class] is top tier that only kings posses, you don't know about your origin, and you don't know famous groups like the league too until I told you. No offense Najma, but to me, your lack of knowledge is more than disturbing, like a man who doesn't know that fire can burn things. Your ignorance to most things is also the biggest puzzle piece to make sense of these whole thing. So... do you mind telling me how you come into this circumstance?" Ben inquired.

Najma lifted up her face and tried to looked at Ben with her red, wet eyes. There a hesitation on her face.

"Look, to be honest, just like you, I want an out too. All the guys that I hired in the investigation had made their own escape once the fact that you were related to the league came out to light. Only me who still sticking out, because I don't believe I could safely ran from this fiasco with all my limbs intact. So please, tell me the answer to the biggest mystery of all of this. Maybe there is an escape route in the story that you haven't told me." Ben pleaded, his voice desperate.

Najma mulled over her choices, and not long after, decided that she too was out of chances.

"This..." Najma gesturing to herself, "... is not my body."

Ben took a solid six seconds before he could response, "What?"

#######

Ben and Najma had gotten out of the cellar and returned to the living room, if that empty room could be called as such.

"So... long story short, you are not from around here." Ben asked, and Najma nodded.

Ben slumped into the only coach in the room and pinched the bridge of his nose. Najma had told him that, basically, she had slept, then woken up in-- not only an unfamiliar place, but also unfamiliar body.

Of course, Ben had trouble believing her story. But if what the woman had told him was true, then it all made sense.

Najma was not from around here, and by here, he meant this world. That would explained why the woman had no single clue about most of the things.

"You are sure your mind is not meddled by some kind of mind magic?" Ben asked the woman who was leaning against the wall at the corner of the room.

Najma turned her head and looked at him, tears no longer streaming down on her cheek, "If mind magic can fabricate false memory with minute details, then maybe. I remember what a car is, I have a rough idea how their engine works. I know guns, I know internet, I know the recipe of five different milkshakes, and I know three movies of fifty shade. I also remember other knowledges that you never heard of. For example, mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell."

Ben stare at her with a blank look, "Yeah... I have no idea what you are talking about."

The general knowledge of mind magic that Ben knew were this: First, the mind mage couldn't use his magic on a person who had the same or more [Level] than them. Second, the person who was being controlled by mind magic became a brain dead, erasing their ability to think. Third, the person whose mind had been meddled by mind magic would always find the tempered memory hazy, not crystal clear like Najma had.

So it is not mind magic, He thought to himself.

Granted, there may be more to mind magic ability than the general population knew, but he was sure mind mage couldn't fabricate memory, let alone a detailed one. If they could, the entire world would had been controlled by them. But alas that was not the case. Mind mage were always killed on the spot by good and evil forces alike. There was a story in the distant past, about powerful mind mage who was strong enough to become a king, but his reign didn't last. Other kings ganged up on him and killed him, and that was it.

Ben got off the couch and walked towards Najma, "If it was not mind magic, then it must be soul magic."

"... Maybe, I know jack shit about magic besides my own." Najma commented.

Ben nodded at her reply, "Then finding answer to your situation is a pipedream."

"How come?" Najma frowned.

"Because only god who could wield soul magic." Ben said it flat.

Najma and Ben locked eyes,

"Well, if you count in some old folklores, then there are three beings who could wield soul magic besides god himself."

"And they are?"

Ben walked away from Najma and went back to the couch, he sat down and pinched the bridge of his nose,

"The Witch of Wonders from the land without light, The Sage of Sacred Scar from the land without night, and Yora The Dragon of Yore from the continent of no more."